


your dreams are not enough (what i need is love)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28697349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: He doesn't have a name. He doesn't have a name and he's never going to get one, not until it feels right on his tongue, but really he should be worried about the rebels who don't quite want him to leave - and that he needs a new pair of boots and his fucking sunburn hurts.What a life, huh? Maybe getting tangled up with Killjoys is one of the better things to happen to him.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul & Jet Star & Kobra Kid & Motorbaby & Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	your dreams are not enough (what i need is love)

**Author's Note:**

> 1) general tws for graphic depictions of sunburn + some implied death/murder and all that  
> 2) this was my attempt to emulate the style of older. more 2012-era danger days fics, if only because i like the style and it's a shame it went OUT of style.

The horizon glares with illusion; the setting sun turns the sky orange and turns the heat into a mirage floating along the corner of his eyes like salvation. 

Salvation. Funny word. Never fuckin’ works out for him, though he knows it might as well mean  _ holy  _ to some people; not to him. It’s another word. 

It’s another word like there’s  _ another  _ fucking rock in his boot, and without the protection of socks, it’s starting to irritate the soft skin of his ankle. Might’ve cut through the skin, actually, but that’s why he isn’t going to stop and look. 

If anything around here smells blood, he’s  _ screwed.  _

Just keep walking, he supposes, until he finds a place to crash. 

_ A place to crash.  _ The people out here aren’t that nice. 

The horizon’s starting to get blurrier by the minute. Whether that’s because the landscape’s starting to mix with the backdrop of the sky or his own consciousness breaking around the edges is debatable. 

Keep walking. 

If he could run, he would. 

There’s a streak of something, maybe, on the horizon, but with his walking speed and the rock that’s  _ really  _ starting to get on his nerves, he can’t identify it. Maybe it’s a building. Anywhere would be good. 

Anywhere, because he’s been out in the sun since high noon and it’s going to fry his brain, and the shock when the temperature drops to below freezing will certainly kill him. 

After all, a ratty long-sleeve shirt isn’t meant to protect against anything other than a sunburn, and the  _ burn  _ of the fabric against his shoulders is starting to make him think the purpose hasn’t been accomplished. 

Does that make sense? 

Everything’s getting blurrier around the edges. 

Just keep walking. 

_ 

The first thought on his mind when he comes back to consciousness is that he’s  _ alive.  _

See, now, that generally isn’t that concerning, considering staying alive is a given when you go to sleep, but not when you pass out in the middle of a saints-forsaken wasteland with blood in your ankle and a sunburn so bad it’s starting to blister  _ underneath  _ your shirt. 

So why the hell is he alive? 

Groaning, he opens his eyes, cursing silently at the gunk that seems to keep them closed. It is… not the sky that greets him. 

Nor the familiar look of WKIL Radio or one of the Neutral caravans that would take him in, sometimes, when he passes them and doesn’t try to start a fight. 

What the hell? 

It’s a  _ ceiling. _

Ceiling means  _ building  _ and building means  _ Battery City  _ and when he tries to sit up too quickly, everything spins until he throws his head back down into the pillow. 

_ Battery City.  _ Battery City doesn’t want him, though - they’d shown that plenty of times over, haven’t they? So why is he - 

Color. 

Color means  _ building  _ and more importantly,  _ building that isn’t in Battery City because color’s illegal.  _

The color doesn’t come from the plain, albeit yellowed ceiling, but from a poster that’s sitting uneven on the wall to his left. It’s a… It’s a  _ Mad Gear & The Missile Kid  _ poster, if he has his bands right, but… Who the hell? 

Neutrals are nomads; they don’t stay in buildings and they certainly don’t stay in them long enough to decorate them. Battery City would never sanction the use of a poster like that. Most of the people he knows wouldn’t know how to get their hands on a poster like that if their lives depended on it. 

So, naturally, he tries to sit up, finds that it makes his head spin, and  _ tries again,  _ albeit slower. 

This time, he’s successful. 

The room doesn’t have much in the room of  _ regulation,  _ that he knows for sure: the MGMK poster’s crooked and colorful as all hell, and there are clothes strewn haphazard across the floor, as well as cans of spray paint and colored pencils and a few - holy fuck, are those  _ ray guns?  _

Ray guns!  _ Blasters.  _

Those are  _ incredibly  _ hard to get your hands on, and he knows because he’s tried and  _ failed  _ multiple times over. 

It’s always something about the battery-pack and the automatic lock of the trigger when it recognizes a foreign fingerprint rather than the ones in its database, so… He’s back to the BLI theory, but again, it’s far too colorful for Better Living to want to even  _ look  _ at this room. 

And he’s on a  _ bed.  _ He hasn’t been on a bed since he was twelve-years-old and living out the worst of a bad case of Zone Fever. 

A bed. With blankets. Though he does push the blankets off, eager to see if there’s any actual damage on his ankle, and then he finds that, yes, he should be concerned about where he is. 

He doesn’t have his boots. In fact, he doesn’t have socks either, but the boots are far more concerning, considering it’s  _ hell  _ to try and walk around burning sand with bare feet; it’d tear your soles in half without second thought. 

_ Fuck.  _

He slides out of bed, wary of the bandages wrapped neatly around his ankle, but it doesn’t seem to hurt all too much and his footsteps are feather-light across the floorboards; whatever loose boards there are, are covered by clothing. 

The door is across the room, and it’s closed, but he has no doubt that he’ll have trouble opening it. On par with the rest of the room, it looks old and vaguely decrepit, and any lock that might be on it is going to be  _ wildly  _ out-of-fashion. 

Unlike the floor, though, the door creaks when he so much as puts his hand on the doorknob, and with a quick wince at the blow to his pride, he opens the door, uplifting the handle to give the hinges more support. 

It doesn’t creak after that, though he only opens it enough to slip through. 

The rest of the building isn’t what he expects, even if he doesn’t have expectations in the first place; the hallway the door opens into is clean, mostly, with dust on the floor in the way dust is  _ always  _ on the floor, but the walls are  _ covered  _ in graffiti. 

Every color of the rainbow graffiti. So many colors that he’d have to pay at least a hundred carbons to get his hands on that much paint. 

And it’s in a  _ hallway?  _

(Suddenly, the spray paint cans and colored pencils on the floor of the room he’d been in make a little more sense.) 

Who the hell keeps that shit around just to write on the  _ walls?  _

Whether he’s judging or not, he toes into the hallway, careful to make no sound whatsoever; everything’s quiet. Everything’s quiet, which means he was either spotted when he woke up, or everyone’s oblivious to his presence. 

There has to be other people here. 

A building like this doesn’t go without people; otherwise the paint would’ve been scratched off and there wouldn’t be colored pencils in the first place. Those are a hard thing to get ahold of - not even  _ counting  _ the blasters lying haphazardly on the floor like a fucking toy or something. 

When he walks down the hall, it’s to the left, because to the right has a silver door at the end, and if he’s learned anything in the last eighteen years, it’s to  _ avoid  _ silver doors as if his life depended on it. Usually, it does. 

However, to the  _ left  _ has sunlight streaming through what he assumes are windows, and sunlight means  _ outside,  _ and outside means Desert, and that means he should probably be leaving. 

Even if he’s in good company, he doesn’t want to stick around and talk to them for too long, because he tends to get ogled at and he’s not in the mood. He just has to find his boots after a minute of exploring, that’s all. 

_ Sunlight.  _

The end of the hallway opens up into a kitchen, and he can’t say it’s anything he’d like food to come out of, ever. 

Then again, it’s hard to find a kitchen that hasn’t been stripped for parts fourteen times over. The kitchen itself is covered in the same graffiti as the hallway, and it’s all  _ industrial,  _ in the way that he’s starting to think this used to be a restaurant, not a house or anything. 

That would make sense. 

Originally, he can tell everything used to be silver, as most industrial kitchens used to be, but the fridge has been completely painted red with designs on top of it and a ton of stuff on top of it, and there’s a big gap under the counter where the dishwasher used to be. 

While a few things litter the counter, some silverware and plates, it’s surprisingly clean. There aren’t even maggots anywhere. 

Regardless, the sunlight isn’t streaming through the kitchen, but rather the room beyond the kitchen, and he hisses when his foot makes contact with a wrapper, an echo sounding throughout the building; not a good idea. 

He just wants to figure out where he is, where his boots are, and whether he’s in friendly territory or not so he can  _ leave.  _

Leaving sounds like a good idea, and nothing seems to awaken within the building, so he continues on, in silence with a bit more focus on where he’s stepping. 

The kitchen empties into a wide, open room, with sunlight streaming through large windows, and he realizes with a start that he’s in a  _ restaurant.  _

Based on the blue tile floors and the leather on the back of the booths and the silver bar stools following a bar along the wall, he’s in a  _ diner.  _ A diner, a diner, one of those pre-War diners that soldiers used to go to for a drink, or kids went to for a milkshake with their friends. 

Holy  _ shit!  _

While he wonders, briefly, how the hell there was a bedroom in a diner, he recognizes that he’s not going to get an answer and it’s no use to marvel over the diner when he could be figuring out his location. 

A Diner. Where the hell was there a  _ Diner?  _

He has most - if not all - of the Inner Zones mapped out by heart, so he knows he isn’t there, but a faint memory tickles, and he  _ really  _ tries to grab it, but when he comes up empty, he doesn’t stop and think about it. 

The sun is high in the sky, but not yet noon; that’s not good. It means the hottest part of the day is yet to come and he has a feeling it’s going to be  _ worse  _ than yesterday. 

Oh, that reminds him. How bad are those sunburns? 

His shirt is still on, thank the Witch, but his alarm raises by fourteen levels when he lifts it and realizes there are  _ bandages  _ all along his skin, and he  _ hadn’t realized they were there.  _

That’s… not good, he swallows, and he doesn’t try to peek under the bandages; the fact that he hasn’t  _ felt  _ any irritation means he’s either under some sort of pain med or there’s some sort of ointment on there that’s restricting the pain and soreness from setting in. That, or he’s just really, really lucky. 

Either way, neither of these realizations help him in the long run, so he forces them to the back of his mind and turns on his heel back to the kitchen. His boots. He needed to find his boots, and then he’d be out of here, and - 

And he collided with  _ something,  _ something red that felt an awful lot like a leather jacket wrapped around a skinny frame, and  _ fuck. _

He just as soon finds himself staring down the sharp side of a switchblade as he steps away, looking far more like a guilty child than intended.

Some of his intimidation fades as he looks the person up and down, but only some, because while they’re tall and lanky and the jacket around their shoulders doesn’t quite fit, and their hair has a  _ horrible  _ blond dye job and a choppy undercut, they’re holding themself like they know what they’re doing. 

And when you’re trying to run away, that’s never a good thing. 

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” the person hums, and fuck, if he wasn’t so intent on leaving, he might’ve noticed the rasp to their voice and the sleep-rough underlying tone. 

“Where are my boots?” It’s a  _ thing,  _ he knows, and it’s impolite to ask something before introducing yourself, but it’s not like he has a name to give and it’s not like he needs one. What he  _ needs is _ to know where his boots are so he can  _ leave.  _

“In the trash,” the person answers calmly, their voice still eerily calm considering they had a switchblade to his throat, and yeah, he was really starting to wonder what the hell that’s about. Beyond the obvious. 

Who the hell wakes up and immediately puts a knife to someone’s throat? Like, on  _ instinct?  _

(And why the hell are they wearing a  _ leather  _ jacket? Don’t they know they’re going to fucking roast to death in that, or maybe just become a target?) 

There’s another memory - a feeling, really, a bad idea in the making - prickling at the back of his throat, but he ignores it, and instead focuses on what he should. The situation. 

That his boots are in the trash and this person doesn’t seem the  _ least  _ bit concerned. So, he’ll play to that, act casual even with the knife in-between them making him sweat more than the heat ever could. 

“Is there a reason for that? And why the hell can’t I  _ leave,  _ you son of a bitch?” 

Maybe starting off with curses and insults isn’t his best idea. Then again, maybe  _ holding a knife to his throat after saving his life  _ isn’t a good idea either, because one good deed doesn’t excuse a bad one. He’d learned that the hard way, and no, he isn’t going to forget it. 

The person waves the knife around, casually once again, as though it wasn’t sharp enough to cut through skin with barely the tweak of the wrist; he can tell solely by the shine of the blade. It’s well taken care of, much like the Diner they’re in. “The soles were melted, what did you want me to do? Let ‘em ruin your feet? After I made sure you didn’t die of  _ infection?  _ No, thanks.” 

“Do I… get a new pair of boots?” Huh. The person didn’t answer the  _ free to leave  _ question, but the boots one, that he can understand. 

It would also explain why his feet were burning yesterday. 

“Depends on whether you feel like accepting help or not. And you can’t leave till we ask a few questions, thank you very much, and I’m not the interrogator here.” 

“Then who are you?” 

The person hums, seeming to take this as his agreement not to run - or that he isn’t  _ stupid  _ enough to try running through the desert in socks and bandages already covering his sunburn. They underestimate how stupid he can be. “Do you really wanna know?” 

“ _ Yes,”  _ he says, annoyed, because  _ fucking obviously  _ he wants to know, but that feeling prickles the back of his mind, and the person says their name the moment he can place the feeling. 

“Name’s the Kobra Kid.” 

_ Killjoys.  _

That’s why the ray guns were on the floor, that’s why the graffiti’s on the walls, that’s why the person -  _ the Kobra Kid -  _ is wearing a red leather jacket in the heart of the Zones, why he’s holding a knife to his throat. 

_ Killjoys  _ saved his life and they might end it, too, because he’s heard a lot of stories about them and oh, they’re hard to find and harder to get away from. 

He never did figure out if those stories were because the Killjoys just had something that everyone wanted, that they couldn’t get away from, or if it was because the Killjoys, well, killed. It seems he’s about to find out. 

“Well?” the Kobra Kid says, gesturing forward, and the knife follows the gesture - closer to his throat. 

He isn’t as surprised, though, and for some fucking reason, not as  _ scared,  _ even though he should be rooted in place. 

“Well  _ what?”  _ It isn’t like Kobra had asked a question. And it isn’t like he has any introduction to give back, though he quickly realizes that that must be what Kobra’s looking for. “Don’ have a name.” 

“Everyone’s got a name.” 

“Not a name I’d like to  _ share.”  _ Or one that he remembers in general, but he supposes those are the same concepts. Can’t remember, don’t feel like sharing. Besides, names are only important if you’re something like, oh, _ a fucking Killjoy.  _

The Kobra Kid. He’d heard of the guy, a few times, in places like the seedy bars he found himself in when he was in desperate need of carbons and worked as a dishwasher. 

The Kobra Kid is a Killjoy to an up-and-rising crew, one that  _ lives  _ to give Better Living Hell in anything they do, and he’s the little brother of the crew’s spitfire and goddamn  _ savior,  _ Party Poison. Together, they’re the Venom Brothers, and from the stories he’s heard, they live up to their name. 

And he’s in their  _ Diner.  _ Fuck!

The third and final member of the Fabulous Killjoys is someone named Jet Star; he’s heard of them, and by far, they’re the one he’s seen around the most. On wanted posters. In the star eyes of whatever bar he’s at. 

They’re the glue of the crew, keeping everyone in touch with the Desert a whole - or so he’s heard. He  _ hates  _ when he’s around to find stuff like that out. 

In this entire time, Kobra hasn’t once moved, and neither has the knife, watching him carefully, studying him as though he was dissecting a frog under the light. He has to say, he doesn’t like being fucking studied. 

“Is there something you’d like to  _ ask?”  _ he snarks, and Kobra doesn’t do anything other than  _ hum,  _ and that stupid fucking hum is going to make him become an enemy to the most feared band of outlaws in a decare or two. 

Either way, he’s getting tired of the fucking knife to his throat, and if they’re going to  _ jnterrogate  _ him for whatever fucking reason, they should give him a new pair of boots. A melted pair of boots is more useful than none at all. 

So, in a rather bold and in-bad-taste decision, he reaches out and bats Kobra’s hand - and the switchblade - away from him, ambling further into the kitchen. That’s what he intended to do, at least, but three feet in, Kobra’s hand is on his shoulder, far too tight than need-be. 

“Go back to Poison’s room. I’ll get you some food, but I swear to the Witch, if you steal something…” 

“I’m gonna guess something along the lines of either  _ you’ll shoot me  _ or  _ you’ll stab me.  _ Don’t worry.” 

Really, he should stop trying to piss off people far more powerful than him. It’s a habit he’s not breaking anytime soon, though, and it would be bullshit to try now. 

He must’ve guessed right, though, because Kobra  _ lets  _ him shake his hand off, and he trudges back to the room he’d woken up in; though trudging is a stretch, because there’s little to no sound as he walks. 

It’s unintentional. It’s not the first time something like that’s happened. 

To his surprise, though, when he slips into the room again, the room isn’t  _ empty,  _ not like it was when he woke up; the sheets are moved and some of the clothes are thrown around the room and the spray paint cans are in a crate in the corner with peak leaking out of one of them. 

And there’s a red-head, standing in the middle of the room, wearing a shirt and boxers and boots, and no pants, and he has the sudden urge to look away, red dusting his face. 

It’s the fucking  _ Desert.  _ They are  _ thighs.  _ Get your fucking shit together, honestly. 

The red-head isn’t looking at him, and with a start, he realizes that the door hadn’t creaked at all when he’d slipped into the room, and so they’re still bent over, looking for  _ something  _ that was either on the floor or in a pile of something. 

Because he doesn’t feel like getting another weapon pointed at his head, he kicks the door to signal his presence. 

This doesn’t work, considering there’s a blaster between his eyes before he has the time to blink, and the red-head is staring at him with a mix between a glare and surprise. 

For  _ surprise,  _ they sure do have good fucking aim, because he’s short as hell and most people don’t compensate for that when they’re aiming, especially on the fly. 

(Then again, the most he’s had to test this theory are BB guns and the occasional sawed-off shotgun, and it’s  _ hell  _ to find bullets for that thing. But he’s seen Killjoys and Scarecrows in firefights. He’s seen the way they fight, though maybe not the  _ Fabulous  _ Killjoys specifically.)

“Hi,” he whispers, and the red-head with dye sticking to his neck lowers the gun, relief evident in his expression. 

“Fucking  _ hell,  _ don’t sneak up on me like that again. Kobes give you the one-over?” 

Well, if he didn’t know Kobra’s name, he certainly wouldn’t understand that statement. But he does and he nods, silently, watching Party Poison as he scrambles around for a pair of pants. Based on the state of the room, he doesn’t think Poison’s going to find any, accidental or otherwise. 

But Poison doesn’t speak again and he fills compelled to fill the silence. “If by one-over, you mean putting a switch to my neck and telling me I can’t leave until I’ve been interrogated, then yes, he has.” 

Apparently, something about this isn’t as it should be, because Poison stops short, rising once again to his full height - only a few inches taller than him, honestly, maybe a little taller if he’s wearing platforms or something. 

“He was… not supposed to do that, how the hell did you manage to piss him off in less than fifteen minutes?” 

“Do you say  _ hell  _ every other word?” 

While, technically, he realizes that it isn’t a good idea to talk to a Killjoy like that, especially one without pants who could wield a ray gun like an extra limb, he can’t help the words that spill out of his mouth and even cracks a smile when Poison doesn’t automatically ghost him. 

“I might,” Poison says smoothly, looking just past him for a second before retrieving a pair of pants that’d, apparently, been sitting discarded on a shelf. How did  _ jeans  _ end up on a shelf? “You need to get some sleep, let those burns heal up ‘fore you’re in the sun again. What’s your name, by the way?” 

Ah. So he’s going to get this question asked a lot, it seems. “Don’t have one.” 

“I’ll call you somethin’ else, then, how ‘bout that?” 

“Whatever you want.” 

Poison takes one long, hard look at him, mutters something under his breath, and then spends a minute fumbling the jeans on over the dusty boots that he’s wearing, and he - him, not Poison - has to  _ laugh,  _ because trying to get skinny jeans over combat boots is something no sane person would ever attempt. 

Then, when Poison’s done and he’s standing in the exact same place as he had been, Poison sighs and shakes his head. “You have a nice laugh. Figured a smile would go with it. Hey, how ‘bout I call you Raven? S’what you remind me of.” 

“Sorry I’m not as expressive as you, Killjoy,” he says, with a hum that vaguely reminds him of Kobra, and he doesn’t quite like that. 

_ Raven.  _

He tastes the name around on his tongue. It reminds him far too much of when he was a kid and he’d woken up with the crows surrounding him, maybe waiting for him to die already so they could eat, and it doesn’t feel like  _ him,  _ but it’s an okay name, all things considered. 

_ Raven.  _

Poison can call him that. He’s not calling himself anything until he finds a name that fits, and that’s not a name that fits. It’s a good place-holder, though, he has to admit that. 

“I have to go on a run,” Poison announces, and that explains why he had to find pants so badly. “Kobes and Jet are still here, if you need anything, but I  _ do  _ need to ask you some questions.” 

He considers this for a moment, though Poison seems rather unnerved that he hasn’t moved in the entire time they’ve been standing there. “You need to go on a run so badly you’re willing to leave a stranger with your crew? Doesn’t sound like any Killjoy  _ I’ve  _ ever heard of.” 

The only way to describe the grin Poison sends him is  _ wicked.  _ “It’s a hell of a lot easier when I know they can take care of themselves, Raven. Don’t try anything, in case you wanna see what Kobra can do with that switch and no one ‘round to stop him.” 

Poison’s out of the room in a flurry of blood-red dyed hair and a ray gun being pushed into a holster. 

And he’s still standing there, wondering what exactly he’s supposed to do with the information, and whether or not he’s  _ supposed  _ to be scared. 

If he is, then it’s working, because he has to say, he doesn’t like the idea of  _ the Kobra Kid  _ in general, from their little  _ interaction  _ earlier to what Poison said. 

Whether Poison accomplished his goal or not, he climbs into the bed, and he finds that it  _ hurts like hell  _ to lie down. 

His shoulders ache, his back aches, where his neck connects to his shoulders ache, and in general, lying on his back feels like  _ asking  _ for a cramp and a cry of pain.

Lying on his shoulders feels much the same, but more like he’s  _ asking  _ for it. 

And so he ends up lying on his stomach, cursing his bandages and his sunburn and his lack of boots and the fucking Kobra Kid and falling asleep. 

_ 

When he wakes up, it’s impossible to ignore the burn in his shoulders and across his face, and he wonders, briefly, what the hell the point of having protection from the sun is if he gets burned anyway. 

And he  _ is  _ burned, he can tell that for a fact, and it means he doesn’t want to move an  _ inch  _ but he’s in a stranger’s bed and that doesn’t feel good on the best of days. 

A stranger’s. As if. He’s in Party Poison’s bed, a fucking Killjoy, and he knows that because Poison was fumbling around for pants what he supposes was a few hours earlier. 

He has to move, though, he has to move because he’s in Poison’s bed and his shoulder will ache if he stays in the same position for longer than necessary. 

Goddammit. He hates logic. 

Either way, he stumbles to his feet, bleary-eyed and tripping over the new stuff on the floor, trying to keep his shoulders from moving as best he can, and cursing at the way he has to squint at the door to make anything out. 

There’s only a little window in the room, at the very top of the way, that lets the light filter through; there’s a place for a lightbulb, but the lightbulb is gone, and he thinks  _ it’s the middle of the fucking night, this is bullshit,  _ before he makes it to the door. 

The Diner is still as empty as it had when he’d woken up earlier. Honestly, where the hell was everyone, to be able to live in a Diner and for him not to notice it until he was in the main room? 

That being said, he wanders to the right instead of the left, and he ends up at that big silver door he’d been content in avoiding. There has to be something behind it. 

And if what he’s heard about Killjoys is right, then they’ll still be awake; because Killjoys were practically nocturnal and they traveled so often they had to stay awake during the evenings, nap during the coldest parts of the night, and wake up during the cool hours before the sun set in and made everything a living hell. 

His footsteps are still silent, and for that he’s thankful, though the soles are starting to ache and yeah, those melted boots haven’t helped the situation. 

The metal of the door handle is cool under his grip, and he doesn’t quite know what to think about that; it’s the middle of the night, but what’s the temperature outside? 

Everyone knows you’re  _ stupid  _ to get caught outside at night, that if you’re not properly dressed, the cold can kill you in probably less than twenty minutes. 

He doesn’t plan on being outside in the first place, but it’s a little fucking hard to figure out where a mysterious cold door leads. 

He’s overthinking it. Fuck that. 

Turning the handle, the door swings open to a… a  _ garage.  _

There’s a Trans Am parked in the center, moonlight bouncing off it like a fucking trophy, some of the paint reflecting in a way that means it’s  _ wet,  _ and there’s a tarp half-covering it. 

On the hood of the car, there’s a yellow helmet with  _ GOOD LUCK  _ painted across the visor - doesn’t that just obstruct vision? - and…  _ Fuck.  _

He really needs to get better about prioritizing his surroundings. 

Because the Kobra Kid is staring at him, curious behind a pair of sunglasses that mostly mask his expression and blond hair falling into his eyes, and there’s a  _ child  _ in his lap. 

If he has to guess, he’ll say the child is asleep, but  _ fuck.  _ A  _ child.  _ In the Desert? 

Since  _ when  _ is that even fucking possible? 

“I - I woke up,” he says, and maybe there’s panic-lacing his voice, but that’s a fcuking  _ child  _ and that child is on  _ Kobra Kid’s  _ lap and he’s in a Diner full of  _ Killjoys  _ and yeah, yeah he has the right to fucking panic, but he doesn’t have fucking boots so he can’t leave. 

“I can tell,” Kobra Kid answers, flat, not a hint of  _ anything  _ in his tone, but he’s gently toying with the child’s curly hair in his fingers; she looks like she’s about seven or eight, with a star-covered blanket over an over-all covered frame. 

Huh. Small kid. Interesting. 

“When do I get to  _ leave?”  _ He asks, even though he knows the answer is the same one he got before,  _ we need to ask you some questions before we can get you some new boots,  _ and if he wasn’t so fucking  _ small,  _ he’d just take a pair of Kobra’s boots or something. 

Kobra doesn’t seem the  _ least  _ bit surprised. “When we ask you some questions. Jet should be makin’ somethin’ in the kitchen, if you feel like talkin’ to them.” 

“Is it another  _ go do this or I’m gonna shoot you  _ type thing, or am I  _ free  _ to go do that?” 

Maybe it’s something about the way he says it, or the way it’s phrased, because Kobra’s eyes narrow behind the sunglasses and he can  _ tell  _ he’s hit a nerve; that, if there wasn’t a baby girl in Kobra’s arms, he’d be staring down death again. 

Kobra has the conflict resolution of a toddler with building blocks, that’s what he’s learning. 

“You are  _ free  _ to do whatever the hell you want, this isn’t fucking Bat City.” 

Oh,  _ really?  _

Because, the way he sees it, he’s not allowed to leave until he answers some questions and that looks like it’s going to happen about as soon as  _ fucking never,  _ and he can’t leave without boots, and they  _ know  _ that. So, yeah, it feels a little like being held prisoner. 

Ironic, really. 

He isn’t being kept by Better Living, forced to be a mindless drone, he’s just stuck wandering around a Diner with the  _ antithesis  _ of Better Living. 

Whatever. He would leave eventually. He just has to suffer through this until he can get some new boots, and he has a feeling Kobra wants to get rid of him as much as he wants to leave. 

And so, he leaves Kobra and the little girl alone in the garage with the painted Trans Am, the door silent as he closes it behind him, ambling back toward the kitchen. 

Huh. He should’ve heard if anyone was in the kitchen, but he supposes he wasn’t on his game when he woke up. Burning sunburn, and all. 

But there  _ is  _ someone in the kitchen, hunched over what might be an electric can opener and what might be described as a  _ fucking tower  _ of cans. 

Their hair is bright purple, curls that reach to the middle of their shoulder blades, and he’d recognize the back of that jacket whether he’d ever heard of the Fabulous Killjoys not. 

After all, Jet Star got their start long before the Venom Brothers came along. 

Jet doesn’t turn at his presence, though he imagines it’s because he’s got a penchant for sneaking up on even the most attentive Zonerats. 

Instead, he stands in the entrance to the kitchen, and he observes. It’s interesting, watching the Killjoys. 

After all, he’s already had two wildly different experiences with first impressions; with Kobra Kid putting a knife to his throat and Party Poison fumbling around for a pair of pants in a room that was less kept together than his life. 

Jet Star seems content, though they’re cursing at the can opener and hitting it with the flat of their palm when it doesn’t do what they want it to do; they’re wearing gloves instead, for some reason, and he doesn’t have the chance to point it out. 

Blurting out seems more his style tonight, anyway. “You might want to try plugging it in.” 

His voice is barely above a whisper, and while he can’t play why, it’s raspier than normal. Maybe it’s the dehydration - it usually went hand-in-hand with a nasty sunburn and he’s sporting  _ that  _ symptom with the pain to match. 

And Jet still jumps two feet in the air with the shriek to match, echoing through the kitchen with  _ lethal  _ force. “Witch fucker on a stick!” 

“I don’t think she’d like hearing you say that.” 

But by the time he says that, Jet’s back on the floor again, palms braced against the counter and chest rising and falling rapidly; fuck. He didn’t mean to  _ scare  _ the ‘joy, but it seems it’s becoming second nature. 

Or maybe he does that to everyone and hasn’t noticed it until now. That would make sense. A lot of things are starting to make sense and his brain is too muddled to make sense of them, so he supposes he can add this to the list. 

“The Witch can fuck off,” Jet huffs, though they mutter a prayer in their next sentence and he pretends not to notice it. “You’re awake. Heard you had a scuffle with Pois’ and Kobra earlier.” 

“They have wildly different personalities,” he shrugs, because that much is true and he’s still trying to wrap his head around being in a Diner full of  _ Killjoys  _ and treating it as just another day, even though Killjoys are the only fuckers in the Desert willing to give Better Living a run for their money. 

Honestly, he shouldn’t be so impressed. Jet jumped into the air at the mention of his voice and Kobra was slow to realize he was there and Poison was fumbling for his  _ fucking pants.  _

But still, he’s impressed and a little intimidated and he can’t deny that in the  _ slightest.  _

_ Killjoys.  _ Outlaws and leaders, revolutionists with color on the tips of their tongue and spitfire in everything they touch. It’s something you learn quickly, when you’ve been running - the Killjoys are the rebels and you, you’re another rat trying to survive. 

They  _ fight  _ when everyone else runs. It’s a lonely kind of life to lead, he thinks, because so far, there’s been something vacant and harsh in Kobra, Jet’s, and even Poison’s eyes when he spoke to them; something that’s been beaten into them over the years that they can’t quite get rid of, no matter how hard they try. 

It’s impressive. That’s impressive, too, and he really needs to stop thinking of them as gods, because they’d make  _ fucking  _ lousy ones. Gods didn’t usually kidnap you, after all. 

Jet doesn’t answer for a second, allowing him to get lost in thought, and he realizes with a start that it’s because they’re plugging in the can opener. Despite it being his suggestion, he just  _ has  _ to ask about it. “So, how do you get electricity out here? I thought Better Living shut all of that shit down a  _ long  _ time ago.” 

“They did,” Jet shrugs, and yeah, there’s something fucking off about this place in general, but he doesn’t want to ask about it. 

(Maybe he should’ve gotten that impressive when he saw the  _ child  _ sleeping on Kobra’s lap in an uncomfortable-looking chair in the garage, but whatever. It’s not like he’s supposed to be smart or anything. He’s just supposed to be  _ alive.)  _

He doesn’t ask further about the electricity. Jet doesn’t give a further explanation or answer, but they do take about five cans from the tower and put them underneath the magnetic strip. “I imagine you need to eat?” 

Well, now that Jet mentions it, his stomach  _ is  _ rather empty, though he doesn’t know if he wants to open his jaw that much, from the sunburn and all. Sunburns could be  _ bitchy.  _ “I - Yeah. Sounds good to me. Where was Party Poison going, by the way?” 

_ Party Poison.  _ It only feels right to say their entire names, because he’s a guest but not a guest, not really, just some runner they found half-dead in the sands and decided to save, for some fucking reason. 

(And then decided to  _ not release,  _ but he has a feeling that’s  _ just  _ Kobra Kid. Kobra seems to, again, have conflict resolution problems.) 

Jet hums, the electric can open squealing in protest as they turn it on, and it begins to diligently cut through the lid of the can. “Drac-huntin’. There’s been an increase in this Zone, lately. We can’t figure out why.” 

Oh. Something tells him it has something to do with  _ him.  _

That would explain why Kobra wanted to question him. 

But he isn’t going to think about that, not right now. “It’s suicide, to go out hunting Dracs. He knows that, right?” 

But they both know that it’s not suicide, not if you’re a Killjoy, not if you can jam the fingerprint recognition, not if you can aim well and hit the gas pedal. Not if you’ve got more color on your person than in all of Battery City and a killshot score of over a hundred. 

(That’s what being a Killjoy must be like, he thinks. It sends a rush of adrenaline through his brain, but Witch, he’s not made to be anything other than a runner.) 

“Maybe it is. He’s hopin’ to catch a Crow we’ve been tracking, Kobra would’ve gone too, but, y’know.” 

No, he doesn’t know, and he  _ especially  _ doesn’t know as Jet takes the can from the can opener and slides it across the battered counter, gesturing vaguely to a shelf with some decrepit silverware on it. 

When he looks over into the can, he can’t say he’s surprised to see it looks like  _ mush.  _ Brown mush with the occasional bean, that looks an awful lot like jello that’s seen better days and never should’ve been invented in the first place. 

“I’m not eating that,” he says easily, because he’s not. He should be at a Market, right about now, but he’s been stumbling around half-dead for a couple days now and he supposes he hasn’t had the time to get his shit together. 

Because, you see, only Killjoys are supposed to get caught up in their one-crew war against Battery City. That’s  _ their  _ thing, that’s why they exist, but he has the luck of a crow out on Route Guano. 

“You’re eating that,” Jet says, fucking  _ serious,  _ and with the way they’re glaring at him out of their one eye - the other has an eyepatch over it -, he guiltily takes a spoon. They look kind-of like his exe boyfriend did after he blew up their shed. 

(The look is  _ snide  _ with a hint of  _ you’re fucking stupid sometimes.  _ It’s not like he could argue with the assumption.) 

“I need new boots.” Unlike with Kobra, he doesn’t feel the same overbearing silence, not with Jet, and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to get his throat slit if he says the wrong thing or if he steps on some toes he shouldn’t. 

Jet nods, glancing away to put another can underneath the magnetic strip. “Obviously. Poison’s supposed to pick some up after he’s done huntin’, but I’m betting he’ll forget.” 

_ Wait a second.  _ “How the hell is he out  _ Drac-hunting _ without the car that’s in the, uh, garage? I  _ know  _ you can’t have enough gas for two cars, not if they burn gas like  _ that.”  _

Gas is a fun thing to try to get a hold of, in the Zones, though he’s seen a few Neutrals try to raid a Better Living supply truck for it, once. He also dug quite a few graves that day, so he supposes it’s more up the Killjoy’s alley. 

Risking their lives for the hell of it, after all. 

With a laugh, Jet takes the can, and reaches over him to grab a fork, and stick it in the can, as though all their resentment will go away if they stab the mush hard enough. “Bikes, kid. We got  _ bikes.  _ Hell of a lot easier trying to steer a motorbike than it is a car when you’re in the heat of the moment, ‘specially if you’re on your own.” 

_ Bikes, kid.  _

That makes sense, though he doesn’t think steering a vehicle while people are either actively shooting at you or  _ you’re  _ shooting at them is a good idea in the first place, nor are you supposed to learn which is easier. 

But it’s the  _ phrasing  _ that’s sticking with him, and he kind-of likes it. 

_ Bikes, kid.  _ They didn’t ask for his name. They didn’t demand he give them something to call him, and he likes that, the idea of being nameless. 

After all, if he’s going to take a name, it’s going to fucking fit him, and he just hasn’t found anything like that. Jet isn’t asking, and he’s not  _ giving,  _ and it’s a good relationship to have in a conversation, he thinks. 

Er, dynamic is the word he’s looking for. Whatever. 

“I suppose,” he starts, cautious, wondering if he’s going to fuck this up like he fucked everything else up. “That makes sense. D’ya know when he’s going to be back? I - I need to get back to - home. I need to get home.” 

The closest he has to home is WKIL Radio, and he’s starting to think Pony is getting tired of having him around - and it’s not like he can say he enjoys aer company, either. 

Show Pony’s the type of runner not committed to being side-lined and living aer life, but not committed to being a Killjoy and dying young. Ae took the color and the looks and  _ ran,  _ and he thinks that’s a bit of a coward’s move. 

But then again, Pony’s got far less scars and far less baggage than him, so who’s he to judge? Maybe ae took the right option out. 

Jet’s raising a brow, though, bringing a forkful of mush to their lips. “Home? Didn’t think you had one of those, considerin’ the shape we found you in.” 

“Let’s say I had a bad run-in with a bad set of people with a  _ bad  _ outcome.” 

“Yeah, I could’ve figured that much out myself. How’d you get away? You ain’t no Killjoy and you’re no runner, I can tell you that jus’ by starin’ at ya when Kobra was bandage’ you up.” 

Jeez, Jet, way too call him out. 

He shrugs, bringing his own spoon up and wondering why the hell they’re eating the same thing with different utensils. Then again, there aren’t any  _ rules  _ in this Diner, and he can tell  _ that  _ just from the knife he nearly got to the throat, and the ray gun blaster between his eyes, a parting gift from Poison. “I - I just ran. You know, like everyone who  _ doesn’t  _ have a blaster does.” 

“I don’t think you hid tail and ran,” Jet says, a narrowing lilt to their voice, and for a moment, he might as well be a caged animal being approached; a bomb about to go off. He feels like both, though he doesn’t know if he’s even considered  _ vaguely  _ dangerous compared to the company he’s keeping. 

He’s not the one with wanted posters plastered everywhere from the Inner City to Zone Four. 

“Well, I did,” he says, flatly, and maybe Jet can sense that he’s lying, or maybe Jet just doesn’t care enough to correct him, because it’s obvious that he’s lying. He didn’t hide and run. Hiding and running made his blood boil every time he tried, and sometimes, sometimes that burning anger won out. 

Very rarely, though. That’s how he stayed  _ alive.  _

Jet shrugs, again, and he has to admit, he understands how they live like this. Out in this little Diner, with graffiti and color at every turn, even if the price to pay is whatever fucking slop he’s eating. 

It doesn’t taste all that bad, all things considered, but it also tasted like something you’d feed your dog if you were low on food. 

(Looking at the  _ Power Pup  _ label, he finds he’s on the nose.) 

Then, of course, he feels like pushing his boundaries, seeing just how much information he can get before the Killjoy in front of him closes off. “Who was the girl? She was sleepin’ on Kobra’s lap. He seemed a little less homicidal.” 

“Oh, he always seems a little homicidal,” Jet snickers, and he revels in the fact that he made a Killjoy  _ laugh.  _ It makes him a little more proud than he’s willing to admit, but whatever. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome or something. “He hasn’t tried to kill you yet, though, so I’d be content if I were you.” 

“He tried. And then he told me to take a nap.” 

Jet nods solemnly. “Sounds about right, from what I heard. That’s actually pretty good. You wouldn’t believe how quickly he can make people angry.” 

Based on that blood-boiling anger thing… “I don’t think I would. But who’s the girl?” 

That’s the question Jet  _ hasn’t  _ answered, and the only one he  _ asked  _ in the first place- he’s interested to see if Jet’ll change the topic again, but with a heavy sigh and half their can of Power Pup gone, Jet hums and the truth spills like honey. 

“We don’t know her name. We call her the Girl, or Girlie. She’s just a kid, y’know? Doesn’t deserve all of the shit happenin’ out here. So we took her in.” 

And that seems to be all they’re going to say on the matter, but he’s not done pushing and, hey, if he’s going to be forced to eat dog food, he’s going to get more answers than Jet wants to comfortably give. 

He shouldn’t be pushing his luck with Killjoys. But he finds he doesn’t  _ care,  _ and whether that’s because he has a death wish or because he isn’t intimidated could be debated. Should be debated, most likely. 

He thinks there’s more to the story than that. There  _ has  _ to be more to the story than that. He hasn’t seen a fucking  _ child  _ in the Zones since he  _ was  _ one, or that time he accidentally ran smack into the middle of what might’ve been described as an ocean of kids. 

(While he never saw those fuckin’ rascals again, he still reminds how one of them shook his hand, with the strength of a kid who’d been running their entire life. One who would never know peace. It’d felt a hell of a lot like looking at a ghost.) 

“Kobra’s got a soft spot for kids, huh?” is what he says out loud, because he knows he’s not going to get anywhere if he goes straight for the overkill with the questions no responsible guardian would ever answer to a complete stranger. 

Not only a stranger but a stranger who couldn’t become a friend if he  _ tries.  _ He needs a name for that. 

Jet hums, putting another can under the can opener. “Yeah, he does. For her, at least, though I’ve seen ‘im with a few other Snow Storms we’ve met and he  _ melts.  _ Kinda hard to think, right? He’s sharp around the edges and -” 

“And sharper with his words, I figured that much out.” 

Talking with Jet is easy. Easy enough, of course, that he slips into the silent flow of conversation, with even a  _ smile  _ tugging at his lips. 

_ 

“Raven!” Poison shouts throughout the Diner and, unbidden, his heart picks up a few beats. He’s starting to wonder whether that’s fear or just general recognition of the nickname, since his fight-or-flight doesn’t kick in. 

He has boots, now. 

He has boots, and he’s still sitting in Poison’s bed, and he’s sort-of wondering what he’s still doing here, but they haven’t asked him to leave and he doesn’t have a radio, anyway. It’s not like he can call anyone to come get him. 

He has a feeling there’s nowhere in walking distance. Doesn’t matter much, though, because he hasn’t  _ tried  _ to leave. 

They haven’t questioned him, either, despite Kobra saying that was initially why he was still there; he’s starting to get the feeling that Kobra was yanking his chain for the hell of it, or because Kobra’s pride got in the way of everything. 

_ “Raven!” _

Fuck, right; he scrambles off the bed, cursing silently at the four different piles of shit on the floor he trips over before he manages to get to the door; Poison really has to fucking clean up, or else he’s going to start doing it for him. 

After all, he might be staying here longer than expected, and it’s rude to stay in one place and not clean up after yourself. 

(Sharing a bed with Poison, though, that’s a little weird; they’ve only napped together so far since their sleep schedules are completely out of alignment, but… But it was a nice weird, if he’s remembering right. Or maybe he was just nervous.) 

Poison’s out in the main room of the Diner, hunched over a canvas that looks a hell of a waste of paint to him; he’s never quite understood Poison’s type of art and he doesn’t think he will, all warm colors mixed and fused together with the occasional burst of purple. 

It means something. He knows it means something. He just doesn’t fuckin’ know what that meaning is and if he doesn’t, then it’s probably not his business, and he’s not going to ask. 

“What?” He asks, because Poison hasn’t noticed him standing there and fuck, yeah, why does he keep sneaking up on people? 

Or, more likely, why the hell are the  _ Fabulous Killjoys  _ so goddamn inattentive? 

Poison jumps, but makes a valiant attempt to hide it, absolutely  _ beaming,  _ “Look! I got some paints at the Market when I got your boots an’ I think I’m puttin’ ‘em to good use. What do you think?” 

_ Like a child painted it.  _ But Poison’s proud of it, so he shrugs, not quite sure how to answer. “It’s, uh… Somethin’ else, for sure.” 

And Poison’s  _ laugh  _ can absolutely light up a room; he can’t  _ imagine  _ how anyone could think of him as scary. 

Then again, he’s more than certain that Poison only got that much at the Market because he showed up covered in Drac blood with a motorbike that needed fixing - Kobra was still whining about that, in the garage probably, looking at the engine with a dramatic sigh. 

“Well, it’s not  _ my  _ painting, but thank you for the support.” And he can see, right underneath the canvas Poison is holding, another little sketchbook.  _ Oh.  _

So he’s supposed to look at that one, not the painting. Huh. 

Well, if he’d known it was by the seven-year-old, he’d have given it a far nicer reaction. After all, the colors didn’t clash and it covered a lot of the canvas for a finger-painting. Cool. 

But Poison moves the canvas to the side and suddenly he can’t  _ breathe  _ because Poison’s fucking good at drawing and lining and  _ coloring  _ and  _ he can see himself in that drawing.  _

It’s nothing quite final, the lines still pretty rough, clearly meant to perpetually stay a sketch, but he can  _ see  _ himself, and the background looks a hell of a lot like an explosion. 

And he looks different, too, flying through the air from the force of the blast, black hair flying in his face along with silver dog tags and baggy jeans and a bright t-shirt and a - and a mask on his face. 

He doesn’t know why he  _ knows  _ it’s him. 

But he does. 

And he doesn’t think Poison realizes it, either, because Poison’s still beaming at him and all Poison sees is a sketch that’s proud of, and something’s welling up in his chest that he doesn’t quite  _ understand.  _

“Who - who’s in the sketch?” he asks, and he hopes his voice isn’t wavering too much, because it fucking  _ feels  _ like it and he can’t quite understand it and  _ that’s him in that sketch, that’s him, that’s him as a Killjoy.  _

As a rebel. 

(He wants to ask why he’s running from an explosion, but a voice in the back of his head whispers that he already knows the answer to that question, the way his hands are always itching for a wire or a chemical or something to make.) 

Poison shrugs. “I dunno. They seemed cool so I started sketchin’ ‘im out, I might make a ref sheet later, but it’s not like I have the time, nowadays, make shit like I used to. Hey, have you seen Kobes and Girlie?” 

He doesn’t know how Poison went from  _ subject one  _ to  _ subject twenty-three,  _ but he forces his gaze off the sketch, up to the artist himself, and yeah, he understands why Poison managed to make himself so infamous. 

It’s something about he can manage to  _ create,  _ it’s something about how he’s just as quick to make art as he is to kill some Dracs for the hell of it. 

“They, uh, I thought they were either working on that bike you trashed or out for a run.” 

Poison scowled, and it’s actually a little cute. “I  _ told  _ Kobra he’s not allowed to do that, he  _ always  _ gets her into some sorta trouble. Have you talked to Girlie yet?” 

“Not when she was awake and not when Kobra wasn’t trying to be homicidal, but y’know.” 

(He can’t quite escape the shivers running down his spine;  _ he’s  _ in that drawing, he’s in that drawing as a  _ Killjoy  _ and he doesn’t even want to  _ think  _ about that. Does he? Would he mind being a Killjoy? It’s not like he’s ever been good at running like he should.) 

Poison hums, and there’s creation even in that, and he’s still fucking staring at the sketch, too big for his body and too small for his home. 

Where is his home, anyway? 

Oh, he doesn’t know. 

But he doesn’t  _ belong  _ in this neat little box he’s placed himself in, and he feels more grounded than he ever fucking has before with the boots he didn’t get for himself, staring between Poison and the sketch. 

“You look like a fuckin’ ghoul standing there, Raven,” Poison laughs, albeit it’s a little clipped and awkward, and they aren’t quite used to each other yet, aren’t used to dynamics, but they  _ could be.  _

And that’s  _ it.  _

He smiles, and maybe it’s because he’s got a feeling that he’ll be staying far longer than intended. All it takes is a pair of boots and a sketch, he supposes, and he’s never been this content in his life. 

“I like that,” he says, because it’s really the only set of words he can find that match how he’s feeling, that even begin to express it. “Ghoul. Considerin’ I keep sneakin’ up on you, and all.” 

“You don’t sneak up on me!”

“Oh, yes, I do. And Kobra, and Jet. No need to feel embarrassed, Cherry Bomb.” 

It’s not quite the end of something. It’s not quite the beginning of something. But it’s  _ something,  _ and that’s what he’ll hold in his heart, and that little sketch will end up in his jacket pocket, folded up and tucked away for no one other than him to know about. 

_ Fun Ghoul  _ is the name he’ll take on, and it’s the only one that feels right on his tongue. Only next to Party Poison, Kobra Kid, and Jet Star, of course. (And Girlie, of course, but she isn’t old enough to pick her name. Not yet.) 

**Author's Note:**

> !!! thoughts !


End file.
